Mike Daniels is a versatile trumpet player and teacher, music director and jazz educator.

 Picture of man playing trumpet

After being thrust into a big band in Birmingham at the age of 16 and told to improvise, Mike discovered the trumpet has a fantastic high register! Gaining a music degree and qualifying as a teacher he settled in Bath and fitted in a busy freelance trumpet-playing career including playing for Bath Philharmonia and many choral societies across the region. He also specialises in authentic performance playing natural trumpet including performances with Bath Baroque and Bradford Baroque Band.

Mike has appeared regularly in the pit playing for shows in Bath and Bristol and plays second trumpet for the outstanding Premiere Brass Quintet.

He co-founded the Gorgeous Big Horns Big Band which exists to perform serious music for big band excellently. He has been fortunate to work with Pee Wee Ellis, Jason Rebello, Mike Mower, Andy Sheppard, Iain Ballamy, Mark Nightingale and John Law playing at Ashton Court Festival, St. Georges Bristol and the Wiltshire Music Centre among others. Working with such high calibre instrumentalists has enabled him to develop as a musician and jazz educator.

Mike performs regularly with his own jazz quartet, quintet, the Moonrakers Dance Orchestra - an eight-piece swing band.

He is Music Director and a tutor at Jazz Factory, a weekly jazz workshop based at the Wiltshire Music Centre.

He has broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Radio Wiltshire and is in demand across the southwest as a lead trumpet player and musical director.

As music director he has conducted collaborative works including African Sanctus, a Haydn mass cycle, Duke Ellington’s Sacred Music and a commissioned work for four choirs by Harvey Brough and in 2008 worked on a new commission by Mike Mower with the Wiltshire Youth Jazz Orchestra.